The tendency to provide arbitrary affiliations to universities has led to anomalies in the education sector in the country, a top official of a government entity that oversees varsities across the country said on Tuesday.

“Some of the universities have been granting affiliations to run the courses that they do not run themselves,” said Parashar Koirala, vice chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC), while speaking at the UGC’s 23rd anniversary on Tuesday. “Universities have turned a deaf ear to our frequent directives.”

“If the trend [of granting affiliations arbitrarily] continuous, I am afraid, universities might even grant affiliations [to colleges] to run aeronautical engineering course. We cannot improve higher education unless such malpractice comes to an end,” he added.

According to Koirala, the UGC faces a challenge in regulating the community colleges established at the behest of political parties.

Minister for Education Dhaniram Paudel, a CPN (Maoist Centre) leader, admitted that political interference has been ruining the education sector.

Though the UGC in principle is a body to regulate the university education, its responsibility is merely limited to providing grants to universities and community colleges. Hence, the UGC’s directives usually go unimplemented. “Higher education should not be under the government and bureaucracy, it has to come fully under the UGC led by academics,” said Tirtha Khaniya, vice-chancellor of Tribhuvan University (TU).

According to a UGC report, which was made public on the occasion, 407,904  students are pursuing university education in the country and of them 333,904 are in TU alone.